I’m sure this is all based on years and years of extensive research, and absolutely cannot be debunked by any other existing data, so, I’m taking it all as gospel.

This comes courtesy of the folks at TIME magazine’s Money blog, in an item published last month (I’m only just seeing it), in which they compiled a list of the top 5 richest superheroes, listing Black Panther/T’Challa (the black superhero who will be played by Chadwick Boseman in the upcoming film adaptation) as indeed the richest of all superheroes, beating out the man in the number 2 slot, Tony Stark (aka Iron Man), by quite a margin – $90.7 trillion to Tony Stark’s piddly $12.4 billion.

T’Challa’s wealth is primarily as a result of the fact that his homeland, the fictional African nation known as Wakanda, is where all of the world’s deposits of vibranium, the most precious and desired metal on the planet, reside. I’ve always considered it a nod to the numerous valuable and cherished commodities that call countries within the African continent, home – like oil, diamonds, coltan, gold, cobalt, even coffee, and much more. However, real opportunities to capitalize on their resource endowments arguably haven’t yet been fully exploited, especially as we continue to see changes in a global economy that promotes economic transformation through commodity-based industrialization, to address poverty, inequality and unemployment. Although this may not apply to all African countries, and should not be the only way African resource-rich nations industrialize.

But T’Challa (and the people of Wakanda) certainly have insisted on maintaining autonomous control over their most precious commodity, vibranium (no imperialist western interference/influence here), which he’s been able to parlay into trillions of dollars in wealth!

All bow down to Black Panther/T’Challa of Wakanda – the richest of all superheroes and supervillains of all time. Maybe he can finance Marvel’s Black Panther movie, ensuring that he has full creative control over the project, and he’s story is told as only he wants it to be.